Gliffy!

I’m happy to announce the official release of the terrific new Gliffy plugin for Confluence. If you’ve been watching the Confluence mailing lists, you will have seen the beta announcements for this plugin over the last couple of months, but this is the real, 1.0 release — just in time for Confluence 2.3.
The Gliffy plugin lets you embed diagrams in a Confluence page for sharing and collaboration. Like this:

We’re already finding the Gliffy plugin indispensable. It adds a whole new dimension to collaboration on your team. You can convey so much more by drawing, and now you’re not dependent uploading a Photoshop or Visio or MSPaint file just to sketch a simple concept.
Here’s how it works: just click ‘Add Diagram’ to create a new diagram. Confluence will prompt you for a name, and then send you to the Gliffy web-based editor where you can create and modify your diagram. When you’re done, click ‘Back to Confluence’; your diagram will be saved and you’ll be sent back to the original Confluence page.

The Gliffy guys have put together a short video tutorial where you can see the whole thing in action. Check it out:

I’ve been working with the Gliffy founders for several months to get this plugin off the ground, and it’s been really fun. They’re terrific guys who have built an really useful product and an exciting new startup. Gliffy began life as a web-based service just for diagramming. But embedding Gliffy within Confluence (not to mention the technical triumph involved) brings it to a whole new level of usefulness. We’ve already seen a great deal of interest, and we hope the plugin will be adopted widely.
You can download the free 30-day trial here, and if you’re interested in purchasing a license, you’ll find details here.